Dinah took the letter with a shaking hand. She held it to her cheek, and said, ‘May I ask you an improper question, Mr Grant?’
He bowed again, his face quite sober for once, and said, ‘You may ask me any question you please.’
‘You plainly know that I am illegitimate. Violet said that you are, too. Is that true? Don’t answer me if you would rather not.’
‘Oh, I would rather, Lady Dinah. Yes, I am illegitimate. By accident, my parents always said, and I must believe them, mustn’t I? A bond between us, do you think?’
She nodded gravely. He had been so cool and matter of fact that they might have been discussing the Book of Common Prayer, or something equally sober.
‘I suppose so. Are you asking me to marry you, Mr Grant, because you love me? I think not, but I should like to know.’
He looked into her steadfast eyes, and decided that only the truth would do.
‘No, Lady Dinah, I don’t love you. I think that I am incapable of loving anyone. But I like, and respect, you. I need a wife who is a lady and to whom I can talk, and you fill the bill on both counts. Will that do?’
Dinah could only nod, mutely, and nod again, when he said to her, his voice as kind and gentle as he could make it, ‘I don’t think that you love me, Lady Dinah, rather the opposite, but I promise to be kind to you, and to make you as happy as you ought to be, but have never been. That is a promise.’
Dinah had once thought him kind, and she supposed that now he was showing himself to be so. It was time to give him her answer.
‘If you now wish to propose formally to me, Mr Grant, I think that I might be able to give you the reply you want in as proper a way as a young girl is supposed to give such an answer. Our marriage will, as you say, please a great many people, which is, I suppose, as good a reason for getting married as any.’
Oh, bravo, my dear girl, was his inward response, but outwardly he did what she asked, and proposed to her in proper form.
‘My dear Lady Dinah, I am here to ask you to become my wife—something which, I assure you, will give me the greatest pleasure. Knowing you, I am sure that we shall deal well together in the future.’
Dinah rose and bowed to him. ‘I thank you for the honour you have done me, Mr Grant and inform you that I shall be happy to accept your proposal.’
Cobie bowed back, and thought again that whatever his future wife lacked it was neither courage nor intellect, but his reply to her was as prosaic as he could make it.
‘I think, Lady Dinah, that now you have accepted me, I have the right to be seated. By you, if you would be so good as to allow me to do so. We are, after all, formally engaged and may be permitted a little licence.’
The only thing was that when he did sit beside her, his nearness caused poor Dinah to be frightened of him all over again. Sensibly, she decided that he must never know that and listened carefully to him while he told her that he wished them to marry as soon as possible, and with very little unnecessary ceremony.
‘I think that you would like that,’ he said, adding with a smile, ‘After the wedding I shall take you to Paris, and make a fuss of you.’
‘How soon?’ Dinah asked, thinking that she ought to show some polite interest in her own marriage.
‘Next week. I have a special licence in my pocket, see,’ and he drew it out to show it to her.
Cobie saw her face change at the sight of it, and cursed himself a little when she said painfully, ‘You were very sure of me, weren’t you?’
He tried to be as kind as he could, ‘Yes, my dear, because I know you to be brave and loving and would want to do your duty, as we all must.’
‘And is it your duty to marry me?’ she said a little slyly, he thought. He decided to reward her with the truth, although he doubted that she would believe that it was.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said simply. ‘It is my duty to marry you, and it will be my duty to make you happy.’
Mr Jacobus Grant wrote to his foster-parents, Jack and Marietta Dilhorne, of New York, and Bethesda, near Washington, who were his true parents, and whom he had never really forgiven for having deceived him about his relationship with them for nearly twenty years. He had always been told that he was the son of a war hero and that his mother had died giving birth to him.
Dear Jack and Marietta,
I am sure that you will be pleased to learn that I have decided to marry, and to marry well. My bride, Lady Dinah Freville, is the younger sister of the present, Tenth, Earl Rainsborough, of Borough Hall in Hampshire. She is eighteen years old. By the time that you read this the marriage will have taken place. I regret the haste that will prevent you from attending the ceremony, but for necessary reasons, all too tedious to enumerate, and none of them reflecting discredit on my future bride, the wedding will take place, privately, by special licence within the week.
You have both so often urged me to marry that I am sure that you will forgive me for doing so at such short notice.
Susanna’s husband will be my groomsman, and Dinah will be attended by her sister Violet, the Countess of Kenilworth, whose husband is a personal friend of the Prince of Wales. I hope that you are both well, and that my news will ensure that you will feel even better. Give my love also to Jack Junior and the rest of the children.
Your affectionate foster-son, Jacobus Grant.
Jack Dilhorne, still handsome and vigorous in his sixtieth year, handed the letter over with a sigh to his wife. ‘A message from Cobie,’ he said, ‘and absolutely typical, I’m afraid. Yet another fait accompli, delivered to us after the fashion of a general in the field writing a despatch to his political masters.’
Marietta sighed, too. She sometimes thought that she knew where Cobie got his barbed tongue from, even though the only time Jack used his was when he was speaking of his wilful son. They had lost Cobie and his love for them ten years ago when her cousin, Sophie Massingham, hatefully and spitefully, had told him the truth of his birth as yet another act of revenge against Jack and herself.
She thought, sadly, that now they would probably never get him, or it, back. The gentle and loving boy he had been before Sophie’s revelations seemed to have disappeared for good. He had fled to the Southwest to escape from them, and when he had returned he had changed completely into someone so hard and formidable that it was difficult to remember that he had ever been any different.
‘Eighteen,’ she said. ‘I wonder how the poor thing is going to cope with him. He seems to be marrying into the top drawer—I wonder if that was the object of the exercise, or if there is something more to it.’
‘With Cobie,’ his father pronounced sadly, ‘there is always a double meaning lurking somewhere. Nothing about him is straightforward. And lately he has been treading such a dangerous path in life that perhaps a descent into domesticity will tame him a little.’
They were both silent for a moment, contemplating the unlikeliness of their son ever descending into a tame anything.
Jack finally said, ‘I suppose that nothing he does ought to surprise us. He is exactly like my father—except that I’m not sure that he has yet learnt compassion—which my father did when he married my mother.’
‘Well, at least Susanna gave the wedding her blessing. Is there a letter from her in this particular budget?’
There was, and it lifted both their spirits a little. ‘She is a sweet girl, if shy and rather gauche,’ Susanna wrote. ‘A lady in every way. I think that she may appeal to his protective instincts. She is certainly quite unlike all the other women he has shown an interest in!’
Since Jacobus Grant’s love-life had excited nearly as much Press speculation as his meteoric career on Wall Street, both Jack and Marietta knew exactly what Susanna meant.
There was nothing to do but send him their retrospective blessing, and hope that one day, not too far away, they might meet Lady Dinah Grant.
Years later Dinah was to look back upon her strange wedding and honeymoon with wry amusement mixed with disbelief. A week to
prepare for the wedding! Violet threw several fits and expostulated with Cobie, which was, she told the Prince of Wales in the small hours, rather like having an argument with the Rock of Gibraltar.
‘Oh, come,’ the Prince told her comfortably, for he liked those around him to be happy, ‘you’re getting the gel off your hands, my dear, and if she’s marrying your dollar prince, so much to the good. Some of the loot is bound to stick to your and Rainey’s fingers.’
Delivered in his pronounced German accent, this had set Violet laughing, and agreeing with him. She had passed on to him her bon mot about Dinah’s future husband being a dollar prince by comparison with all the American dollar princesses whose families had bought their way into British society. Forever after he was known as that as well as Apollo.
Cobie knew of his new nickname and was amused by it. Everything amused him, Dinah thought, she being singularly unamused herself. Between rushed fittings for an elaborate wedding dress, white satin with lace inserts, and so many flounces that she felt like a Christmas tree being displayed out of season, the provision of a coronet of lilies of the valley, an elaborate bridal bouquet, and a small trousseau to take with her to Paris, she hardly knew where she was. Particularly since everything she was being laced into was far more suited to Violet’s lush face and figure, rather than Dinah’s slender and modest one.
‘Don’t buy too much,’ Cobie told her quietly one afternoon when they were taking tea together at Kenilworth House. Violet was acting as a chaperon, and Susanna Winthrop was there to support all three of them.
Not that Cobie needed much supporting, and now he was telling her that she was going to Paris, the couture capital of the world, and he would see that she had a new wardrobe fit for a near-billionaire’s wife.
Dinah began to rebel. ‘I don’t want to be a clotheshorse,’ she wailed at him.
‘Nor shall you be, my dear,’ he told her equably. ‘But I should like to see you dressed in something more stylish than your present wear, or the wedding dress which Violet is inflicting on you. It would suit her, I have no doubt, but it won’t suit you. Imagine the fuss, though, if I suggested to her what you ought to wear.’
‘And what ought I to wear?’ asked Dinah, teasing him a little, for she had found that she could do that and he didn’t seem to mind.
‘Wait and see,’ was all he said. ‘It will enliven our life after the wedding. Try not to mind all this too much, I don’t.’
‘You’ve had more practice,’ Dinah moaned gently.
His left eyebrow rose. ‘I have?’ he murmured, amused. ‘I can’t recall being married before. Refresh my memory. Because if so, we’d better cancel everything. Bigamy carries a prison sentence.’
Dinah slapped at him, caught Susanna’s surprised expression, and blushed. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ she told him crossly. ‘You’ve lived in the public eye for years, and know exactly what to do. I don’t.’
‘But you soon will,’ he whispered to her, leaning forward confidentially as though they were a real pair of lovers. ‘Have another macaroon, you need to gain at least a stone in weight. You don’t eat enough.’
She shook her head, saying primly, ‘No, I’m not hungry.’ She knew that she had become painfully thin during the last year, particularly during the recent weeks of Violet’s dominance and that she ought to eat more, but the thought of food was often nauseating.
‘Oh, but I insist,’ he said gaily, and as though she were a bird he was feeding, he lifted the macaroon towards her mouth, saying, ‘Pretty please, Dinah. Your future lord and master commands.’
His expression was so sillily loving that she began to laugh, so he took the opportunity provided by her open mouth to move the macaroon still nearer it. To stop his folly, and for no other reason—or so she told herself— Dinah allowed him to pop it into her mouth.
She could see Violet’s stunned and angry expression and, moved by some emotion which she could hardly understand, she made a noise indicative of pleasure.
‘More, please,’ she murmured, and leaned forward for him to do it again. He obliged her, his blue eyes were wicked.
‘I see what it is,’ he told her gravely. ‘You have grown too weak to feed yourself. We must remedy that.’ This time it was a petit four which she took from his fingers.
Violet could stand no more of this.
‘Really, Cobie,’ she said angrily. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that you would be so childish as to encourage Dinah to behave badly.’ The moment that the words were out, she regretted them.
Neither Cobie nor Dinah responded. Dinah was beginning to feel a wild sense of the freedom which Cobie had promised her when he had proposed.
‘I will be good if he’s good,’ she said like a naughty child. ‘I do believe I’m feeling hungry. Are those butterfly cream cakes, Cobie? They used to be my favourite.’
He immediately picked one up from the plate and began unpeeling it from its paper. Cream clung to his fingers. He held them out to her, and said, wondering how she would respond, ‘Lick me clean, please, my love, and then I’ll give you the rest.’
What wild spirit moved her Dinah never knew. Out came a small pink tongue which scooped up the cream from his hand, and then, when Cobie broke the cake in half to offer her a portion, she said, ‘Mmm, nice!’ Whether it was the cream, or his fingers which she meant, she wasn’t sure.
She was only sure that Violet’s jealous expression, and Susanna’s astonished one, were giving her a sense of power which she had never felt before.
‘And now we must behave ourselves,’ she told him severely, ‘or Violet will fetch the cane out to make sure we do!’
It was the only light incident of the whole pre-wedding period. The wedding was as sober and dull as a wedding could be, and if Cobie looked particularly splendid, Dinah, in her unsuitable wedding dress, looked quite the reverse and was aware of it. Only Violet was happy that she had succeeded in making the bride look even more dowdy than usual.
The small reception was depressing, too. Everyone made speeches, including the groom, who was behaving so properly that Dinah thought that there must be something wrong with him. The Prince of Wales had sent her, by Violet, a pretty brooch, which was duly pinned to her dress by the groom with a great deal of ceremony. There was rather a lot of champagne, so Dinah drank rather a lot of it—for after the wedding would come—what?
Her mother, who had come out of retirement for the ceremony, murmured to her, ‘What a catch, my darling! I told you you would do well, but…’ and she had shaken her head. ‘He’s formidable, in every way, isn’t he? Such looks—and so rich!’
Which only went to show, Dinah thought, that her mother was a good deal more intelligent than Violet or Rainey if she could see how dangerous he was. She would be sure to ask Faa what he thought of her husband the next time she saw him—he was not allowed to be at the wedding, of course.
Sir Alan Dilhorne was there, murmuring what a pity it was that Jack and Marietta could not be present, but, knowing Cobie, he thought that there were probably sound reasons why the marriage had to take place at such short notice.
They were going to the groom’s grand new home in Park Lane for the night, and then were due to set out for Paris on the boat-train the following morning. Everyone cheered them when they were driven from Kenilworth House at the end of the afternoon. Before they left Rainey shook hands with his new brother-in-law and made sober noises about the Freville family gaining a benefactor as well as a relative.
Somehow Cobie managed to look suitably modest, a feat no one but himself quite appreciated. Rainey was taking the view of most of society, except perhaps Sir Ratcliffe Heneage, who had not been invited to the wedding, that Jacobus Grant had had an access of enormous good luck at poker, to make up for all the bad luck which he had experienced since he had landed in England.
The real truth was beyond most people’s understanding. Hendrick Van Deusen, who had given the bride a beautiful rope of pearls and a calf-bound edition of
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was perhaps the only person besides Dinah’s father—and perhaps, Sir Alan Dilhorne—who knew what tricks the groom had employed to win his bride.
Not that the bride was worrying about anything but the wedding night, so that when they were at last alone, the butler having retired, and they were ready to go upstairs to the bridal bed, the groom’s words to the bride came as a great shock.
He looked at her white face, her poor thin body, and saw how she was shivering, flinching away from his touch. He had made no real decision about how he would treat her when they were at last married, but now that they were he said gently, ‘Dinah, my dear, look at me.’
She turned her ashen face towards him. ‘Cobie?’ and her voice was questioning.
‘My dear, I don’t think that you are ready yet for me to make you truly my wife, are you?’
Dinah caught her lower lip with her teeth, dropped her head, and muttered, ‘I don’t know. But I am your wife, aren’t I?’
He put an arm around her and pulled her down to sit by him on the sofa. ‘Yes, that is true, and I truly want you to be my wife in every way. But I also want you to be happy when I make you so, and I honestly don’t think that tonight is the time. You are tired, and unsure of yourself. You don’t know me very well, and I think that when you do, we shall know when the time has come, and then we can truly be man and wife. But not yet.
‘On the other hand, if what I have said has made you unhappy…’ and he left the rest of the sentence unspoken, but she knew quite well what he meant.
Dinah drew a great shuddering breath and said, ‘I don’t think I’m ready. I hope that I will be soon.’
It was one of the harder decisions he had ever made for he was not sure that he was doing the right thing in delaying matters. He said gently, ‘I hope so, too, Dinah, for I not only want you to be my wife, but I think that you will make a good mother for my children.’
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